THE 21 April, Easter day as well as Christmas holidays in Rome, at 15.03 a mini-ambush on facebook surprised me by causing me too much fibrillation; a malaise that has gradually turned into a sort of remorse for an action taken a quarter of a century ago and that today, with the benefit of hindsight, perhaps I would not do again.
These are the facts: at 15.03 on Sunday Virginia Raggi relies on his facebook page to refer to the Sassari Brigade: "... we meet them every day ... they are the men and women of the Sassari Brigade ... I wanted to meet them and greet them ... I went to the nomad camp in Via Salviati ... I brought Easter greetings to the military led by General Andrea Di Stasio ... their work is allowing to combat the phenomenon of toxic fires resulting from the traffic and the illegal disposal of waste ... also thanks to the massive reclamation operations that allowed to remove heaps of waste ... Rome he says thanks to these guys and these girls who are our guardian angels .... Ps: I thank the Minister Elisabetta Trenta and the Army General Staff for support ... ". All accompanied by the inevitable edifying frame of smiling faces for the delivery of an Easter dove pack (a symbolic gift that the presumable father of a family would have appreciated beyond measure) to one of the engaged soldiers, now with a character no longer of emergency but of continuity , in activities that revolve around waste, road holes and Roma.
The image instantly brought me back in time and space, to XSUMX's June 7 in Sassari, and to the pistolotto that I had then sent to memory with the intention of offering it to the Minister of Defense Cesare Previti during the journey that would take us to edge of a VM from the heliport of the Gonzaga barracks under the command of the 1994 ° Regiment.
It was the day of the showdown of my declared refusal, as the first Sardinian commander of Sassari, to execute the order, within the framework of the umpteenth restructuring of the armed forces, to proceed with the dissolution of "my" Brigade. My reaction had been immediate and unequivocal: "If it must be so, first you must take the command off and then give this position to whoever you like ... otherwise it will be war". And it was war (for the detailed chronicle of the facts I refer to the reading of "From Calamosca to Calamosca - To the vain search for an army").
This is the pistolotto prepared for Previti: Mr. Minister, I am of the opinion that the thirteen brigades to be kept alive must be ... four alpine brigades, because the Alpine troops are smart people, a bersagliere tells them! ... Then the "Aries" and the "Centaur", because it is the minimum we need to have in terms of tracks. Even the "Folgore" is out of the question. The "Grenadiers of Sardinia" is indispensable in the Capital. A brigade must gravitate on the Adriatic (the "Pinerolo"), one on the Tyrrhenian (the "Garibaldi") and one in Sicily (the "Aosta"). And in Sardinia it is necessary to keep the "Sassari", because the Sardinians are good soldiers and why Italy has contracted a great debt of gratitude towards the noble island, as 16 June 1918 said, in a speech to the House, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, President of the Council. So I ended up joking: I let her choose the thirteenth brigade to keep alive ... otherwise I could boast that I did it all myself!. An hour later the Capo di Sme, general Incisa di Camerana, ordered for the revocation of the order of dissolution of the "Sassari".
Having said this, feeling the use of Sassari and the Army in waste, Roma and road holes insistently, after some time, instead of discussing the lost credibility of our armed forces unable to defend, if necessary , national interests, all this makes me regret having prevented the dissolution of the "Sassari". And I will remain of this idea until the responsibility of the Defense will continue to be mortified by the mediocrity of inadequate political figures, even before it is detrimental, to the roles that have been called to play.
I believe that Vittorio Emanuele Orlando is turning in his grave to see what is happening within our armed forces, and I am sure that if he could make a speech today in the House he would not fail to ask the political forces of both majority and opposition of to revive Italy from the role of insignificant spectator of the tormented international scenarios, from neighboring Libya to the theaters of more distant horizons. What is certain is that he would never accept to hear the "Red Devils" of Sassari, feared by enemies, transformed into "guardian angels of tourists and visitors to Rome-Capital". And I am sure that Loddo Giovanni, my maternal grandfather, fell on the Piave in the 1918, and his brother Francesco, another of the Sardinian 2150 swallowed up by the Great War, who fell in the 16 on the same day he fell his commander of the Sassari, general Eugenio De Maria.
For my part, I hold the remorse, and with it the judgment on this policy that continues to be of Cambronnian intonation: "merde".
General Nicolò Manca (First Sardinian commander of the Sassari Brigade)
Photo: @ virginia.raggi.m5sroma / ministry of defense
